Macquarie Upgrades ANN, Inc; Raises Price Target

In a note released Friday Macquarie (USA) upgraded ANN, Inc.

ANN

from Neutral to Outperform and raised the price target to $53. In describing the reasoning behind this upgrade Macqaurie analyst Liz Dunn provided a list Including:

On March 20th, Golden Gate Capital Public Equity Opportunities announced a 9.5 percent stake in Ann Inc.
ANN has persistently traded at a discount to our coverage universe.
ANN just announced a strategic restructuring that is expected to save $25 million per year.
We believe activist shareholders could encourage the company to take on debt to fund a sizable buyback, and ANN's steady free cash flow could support the addition of one turn of leverage.
We also believe the company could be encouraged to pursue a sale to a strategic acquirer.
Guidance for 1Q and FY14 are appropriately conservative.

In the pre-market session, ANN was trading up a little under 2 percent.

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